


far from here where the beaches are wide

by warfare



Category: Tenjho Tenge
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-14
Updated: 2008-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-19 04:44:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/197041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warfare/pseuds/warfare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>just leave me your wake to remember you by.</p>
            </blockquote>





	far from here where the beaches are wide

**Author's Note:**

> These are four semi-unrelated bits that should be able to stand alone but work better as a fluid piece; they aren't in chronological order, I don't think. I wanted to make this an epic fic for the pairing but it's summer vacation and I haven't the attention span. Regular warnings apply; spoilers, a series no one cares about, trite, trite, trite. ♥

Hirohiko first hears about the Shoujou family marriage practices from one of Mitsuiro's cousins; he doesn't believe them, so he goes to ask her himself. She inclines her head slightly; at first he thinks it's just a nervous habit of hers, an attempt to get a clearer look at him, but after a moment he all at once realizes that his mouth is dry and his heart is pounding and that she is _nodding_.

"It's true," she says, and opens her mouth to explain further. He smiles widely, his eyes over-bright, and manages to cut her off easily (as if he isn't choking back bile),

"Oh... I suppose it wasn't a lie, then." He turns around and leaves her family compound; he shoves his feet into his shoes at the gate but is in such a hurry to get out that he doesn't tie the laces. He's supposed to stay for dinner but he knows he won't make it through the first course. His untied shoelaces threaten to tangle in the bike he's borrowed from the stationmaster. He boards the last train home; if they were heading out of his station, closer to the city, he supposes that he'd be packed in with salarymen on their ways home, but Mitsuiro lives in the countryside and there's only a few old ladies in the car with him.

He's too young to understand why his chest tightens the way it does remembering Mitsuiro's characteristically blank-faced affirmation, or why the tears pour uncontrollably out of his eyes. It's the middle of winter and he pulls his coat tightly around him. He tries to keep his sobs quiet so that the other people on the train won't notice.

\---

  
The only time Hirohiko expresses any doubt is a heady evening in late August; they are pulling out of the drive after meeting Takayanagi Mitsuomi for the first time, and he's been unusually quiet all afternoon. His hood covering his eyes (why is he wearing a hood in late summer, she wonders a little exasperatedly, but she's long since learned to not ask him these questions - all he ever does is break out in that infuriating little laugh that makes her wish she could smile, too), he mutters in a way that indicates not a subdued tone but that he only wants to be heard by her,

"Hey, Mitsuiro. If I don't get out of this alive, promise me you'll bury me in a field of sunflowers?" She can't help thinking for the first time since he became family head that he looks much, much too young and tired for this. Straightfaced, she retorts,

"Don't be silly. You'll be buried in your family plot, of course, and I will not rob your grave for you, no matter how hard you beg me now." He sighs, his smile not quite reaching his eyes, and in a resigned tone concedes,

"Well, then you'll just have to bring me fresh-cut sunflowers every day."

"You are the biggest sentimental I have ever met," she says angrily, in part unhappy with the topic of conversation but mostly frustrated at how even so she can't keep the fondness from creeping into her voice. In her pocket, her hand clenches over a good-luck charm.

"Ah, also will you wear a ridiculously short skirt whenever you come to visit me? You can count it as my last request." He looks up to meet her eyes, and this time his smile is a mile wide. She reaches out to smack him but he tumbles across the car seat, laughing like he's twelve again.

\---

  
"I wonder if I would love you like I do," he muses to Mitsuiro-as-Mitsuomi, "If you weren't so strong like a freak." Mitsuomi opens his mouth to retort, but Hirohiko grabs at the back of his neck and pulls the other "boy"'s lips down to meet his own.

Hirohiko has kissed her in five hundred different faces, but for each one whenever her chi shifts away from her mirage and toward herself, he pulls away as if stung. "What are you doing?" she asks him one day, frustrated for reasons she can't quite explain.

"All of these are my weaknesses and failures," he explains ruefully, "but Mitsuiro, I asked for a reward, right? So I have to earn it first."

She doesn't reply that it seems vitally unfair that he hasn't really touched her in years while she has tasted his lips over and over again; she's not really sure who deserves to be more unhappy, so she stares at the floor.

\---

  
From when they were very young, Hirohiko has always had an extremely unsightly fondness for sprawling himself over whatever furniture is made available to him. During ceremonies and events at his home temple, he'd sprawl out over the tatami; in Mitsuiro's home, he'd fall asleep under the kotatsu while she studied to the background of her parents ‘tsk’-ing. At his old school, when she'd drop by to see him, he'd almost never be in class; she'd constantly find him napping on the roof. It’s led to some people not taking him particularly seriously as the head of the Kabane family, but the two of them both know that it doesn’t matter what other people think of him in the end. Mitsuiro notes when she enters the Enforcement Group's designated lounge that time, a weighty destiny, and having just fought a person gifted with the "dragon's eye" do not seem to have cured him of this habit.

"You know", he remarks to Mitsuiro; his legs are over the back of the sofa, and his head is dangling off of the seat. He leans further backward, regarding her upside-down with those blind eyes of his as what might be interest flits across his face, "Today, during that fight with Natsume Aya... I found myself wishing I could see her face. I wonder what she looks like." His head tilts - how on earth is he doing that while he's upside-down, she wonders. "Is she pretty?"

Mitsuiro's expression doesn't change, and she knows that he can't smell any irritation from her, but she stands up and makes to move away from the couch. "Normal." He reaches out, grabs the edge of her jacket.

"Naa, Mitsuiro... just now, did I make you jealous?" She doesn't respond, but as the rest of the Enforcement Group comes in, he grins brightly enough to light up the whole room.

Later, when they are alone again, he flips onto his stomach, rests his head on his arms, directs his sightless eyes toward her face. "You don't need to be, you know."

"I'm not."

"I know." He smiles slightly, his expression faraway. "But I just wanted to say it. That having Mitsuiro as the last thing I ever saw... I've never been sad about it, even for a second."

Mitsuiro's nose is not as good as Hirohiko's, but the smell of hydrangeas that has been making her dizzy all afternoon seems to dissipate. When he beams up at her she thinks about the way he used to laugh at her as a child, and even though they haven't yet stopped the cogs of fate, she finds herself almost wishing that he would take her hand in his.


End file.
